


Forward, Always Forward

by AnneLaurant



Series: Flowers and Oranges [4]
Category: Shaman King (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Choices, Family, Friendship, Gen, character sketch, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:47:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25415641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnneLaurant/pseuds/AnneLaurant
Summary: Arguably, in their group, Tamamura Tamao got the shortest end of the stick. With only Ryu by her side, she had to manage a business and their employees, take care of one baby and two younger kids, watch her mentor die over a petty accident, worry if the head of the family and his wife was coming back or not, and endure what typical humiliation and bigotry existed in society. Some things can't be helped, but that didn't mean she had to stay a tragedy.Compliant with SK main canon; not compliant with SKF continuum.
Relationships: Tamamura Tamao & Kyouyama Anna
Series: Flowers and Oranges [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1687336
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9





	Forward, Always Forward

So maybe she was relieved. Maybe she’d been hopeful.

But really, she was way emptier than she’d thought she’d be. It wasn’t a bad feeling; it was just… underwhelming.

Reunions were supposed to be something like happiness, frolicking, pure unbridled joy, and yet, all Tamao felt was… nothing. She didn’t cry. She didn’t even laugh. It was just… a thing. A slightly happy thing. Probably even relieving.

That must’ve come with being a grown-up.

* * *

Hana was a wonderful child. Truly, it was difficult to contain his outbursts of emotion and adventure, but Tamao felt proud of raising him.

Asakura Hana was her own child, just as much as he was Anna’s. Tamao wasn’t just so sure where to go from here, now that his real mother was back.

She wasn’t really very proud of having to claim she herself was Hana’s real mother. Blame it on her once-negative point of view in life, in which she’d sincerely thought his parents were not coming back at all. Between raising him, looking after the Munzers, managing the onsen, struggling with her studies, and not to mention, living with society’s everyday sexism, she’d done all she could to survive that onslaught of problems and troubles.

Such was life.

Not everything she did was rational, Tamao now thought. Childish foolishness, it was. She’d been too shy as a kid, and when she had to grow up, she had to do it so quickly. There were a lot of things she didn’t do, and a lot of things she could’ve done. Many what-ifs ran through her head from time to time.

Though between her own circumstances and Anna’s circumstances, Tamao wouldn’t give up her position. This was still her own life and she wouldn’t trade it for anyone else’s.

* * *

“I’m taking over,” Anna announced, and Tamao only tipped her head.

“Do you know how to do this?”

Anna grimaced. “…frankly, I don’t recall right now, but I should be able to remember it if I see the records.”

Ah, yes. The onsen’s records of about seven years of profit and loss. “It’s all right. I’ll assist you with what you need, if you forget.”

“Yes. Thanks.”

The rules can change so drastically after six or seven years, after all, and in this country, women have to support each other. Saying “You can’t help it!” was starting to be not enough.

* * *

Tamao felt silly for herself. Once, she was so obsessed with having to support a boy she loved with whatever she can, even if that meant hurting herself. Now, that boy was a man, and she was no longer a girl with her head in the clouds, but a woman with her feet grounded in reality.

Thinking about that silly crush of hers filled her with embarrassment, and all she felt for this boy-turned-man now was simply gratitude. …and probably also a bit of emptiness, because a huge part of his impression on her rooted from that crush.

“What do you plan to do now?” she asked him, cooly, without stammering one bit, without any hidden agenda. She just really wanted to know, wanted to fill in that emptiness and curiosity.

“I really want to work,” Yoh said, and nothing in his voice surprised her, “But I want to spend my time with Hana first. Until he’s started school.”

“Uh-huh?”

“I don’t know if I want to work for the Onsen. I’m not interested in business, and I’m not really good at that. Promoting stuff and… selling stuff. That’s Manta’s thing.”

“How about working for the convenience store?”

“Not really. I’m more of a manual labor kinda guy.”

“Construction work?”

“Probably. That’s the only other nice-paying job I can get with my educational background.”

Memories flashed through her mind, and Tamao bowed her head, her eyes transfixed on the floor. “All right.”

“So, Tamao… if you wanna do anything else right now, it’s all right. I’m the family head now, and I can grant you the rights to be free of your burden.”

Tamao raised her head, her eyebrow raised as well. “My burden?”

Yoh looked at her with the same confused expression. “…the Asakuras. I meant… this. We dumped everything on you, right?”

Oh…

That.

“I enjoy working in the onsen. Besides, right now I’m the one who knows how to work things out the most. Anna-sama’s barely relearned the trade yet!”

“Er, we can handle ourselves.”

“Yoh-sama, I choose to stay,” Tamao firmly decided. “I’ll leave if I want to, but don’t…!” _Don’t throw me away! Don’t say you can handle it by yourself when you look like you’re about to give up! Don’t lie to me!_ “Don’t tell me what to do!”

Yoh looked so perplexed at the moment, and Tamao’s heart broke a little. What was he even trying to do? Had he really given up on finding ways to support Anna and the business and their employees a bit more? Tamao poured so much of her life into these things they wanted to keep – these things _he_ wanted to keep. The onsen, the Munzers, his very own _son_ … why could he at least give in some more effort into it?!

Oh, how silly it was for her to ever think she’d ever liked this guy. She was only going to give in to the malicious voice telling him to leave him, because the future he’d afford her was full of giving up.

* * *

The Hanagumi weren’t exactly her friends. They were her (the Onsen’s) employees, and their headspaces lived in a different world than she did.

If anything, Anna was the closest thing to a good friend Tamao ever had. Mikihisa was her mentor, Ponchi and Konchi were bullies, Ryu was more of Yoh’s friend (She felt so guilty, guilty, guilty. That she also dumped her own problems on Ryu.), Yoh was a different man now, Jun was… Pirika was… the first Anna was… so on and so forth.

It’s just different right next to Kyouyama… no, Asakura Anna.

“Let’s take a bath together, shall we?” Tamao said one day, and Anna just nodded.

They proceeded to enjoy their own amenities. What kind of business managers and owners were they, if they themselves could not enjoy their own services? But more than that, this was bonding. Just between two friends, two women who had more in common than they thought.

And Anna, ever so Anna-like, asked, “…so why did you refuse Yoh’s offer?”

My, how direct. Tamao smiled. What should she say? Her pride? Her attachment to Hana? Her joy of being an enka singer for the onsen during entertainment nights? “I have my reasons. So many reasons.”

“That so…”

“Freedom is nice, but I could easily afford myself that.”

Anna chuckled. “And you think we can’t do the same?”

Tamao only tipped her head, and a moment of silence stretched between them.

“Well. Here we are.” Anna sighed. “Stuck back in Funbari.”

“At least not stuck in some foreign place!”

“Yes. But we’re still losing more money than we’re earning it. It’s probably gonna cost us both our arms and legs to rake back everything we’ve spent.”

“Life is not all about money, Anna-sama. Don’t give in to the teachings of the First.” _Or to pressure from Hao._

“Words won’t make me stop worrying about reality, Tamao.”

“Well, there’s that.”

“So what now? What do you plan to do?” Now that the sinking boat just took in two more passengers and would sink in further?

“Nothing much.” Tamao shrugged. “Sing a bit more, do a bit more for the onsen. Now that you two are here, you can take care of Hana and, I’ll have more time to give for the onsen. Or for myself.”

“Really now? What do you do for yourself whenever you have the time?”

“Dress up. Put on makeup. Do some shopping for more clothes and makeup. Those girly things.” Looking pretty and feeling pretty despite the stress brought so much comfort to her. There wasn’t much she could do with the other aspects of her life. “And to think, I took them for granted because of the Asakura’s traditional ways.”

“You? Wearing makeup? Didn’t think you were the type.”

“People change, Anna-sama.” Tamao experimented with her style a lot. Upon losing a major part of herself, she went from trying to look like Anna to gain a semblance of strength, to being more sukeban-like, to being… whatever she was right now. “Well then, speaking of beauty, let’s get out of the bath before we faint.”

“Of course.”

The two finished their bath, and they proceeded to handle a few more chores for the day. Keeping records smooth and straight wasn’t a very easy task! Yoh wasn’t really very keen on numbers like these, and Ryu didn’t want to mess up the records, so they, the women, had to take on this task.

Tamao divided the receipts between her and Anna. Identifying which ones were losses and which ones were gains was now easy for the itako, but Tamao knew Anna still struggled with the terms. It would still be a while before Anna could do this all on her own.

“…Tamao, don’t you resent me?”

And it would probably also take a while for her to adjust to the whole situation. It’s all right. Tamao’s doing her own adjustments too. “Not really. Why would I?”

“For dumping everything on you.”

“You said the same as Yoh-sama. Almost the same, I mean.”

“Almost the same?”

“He didn’t ask me if I hated him. He just said he’d free me from the burden of… this.”

“Wow, lucky you.” Anna rolled her eyes. “He never said that to me.”

“Eh? That he’d free me from the burden?”

“No. That he’d free _me_ from the burden.”

She found it cruel, but Tamao couldn’t stop herself from laughing a bit. Anna only rolled her eyes.

“Aaand that’s why you didn’t get married, right?”

“Not really. That was more of me trying not to chew bigger than I could bite.”

“Hana could’ve had a childhood friend. Or a sibling, if you might.”

“What a nice thought.” Tamao stopped writing down the many numbers and figures they needed to calculate. “But, one child was enough for me to handle.”

“Was? How about now?”

“I dunno.” Tamao felt that she was already leading her own life now. She’s lost control before, but now she had it back. She could think clearly now, and she also had her favorite people in the world back home safe. They’d done things that hurt her, and she’d done things that didn’t sit well with them either. “I’m just gonna take things one step at a time. But please know you two won’t get rid of me so easily. Besides, I don’t want to make Hana sad by suddenly leaving. It’s a little difficult to make amends with that boy.”

Anna snorted. “You said it.”

“Why? Is he giving you a bit of trouble?”

“Nothing we can’t handle.”

…ah. So they, too, had to make amends. Tamao chuckled. “Good luck.”

“I’ll need it.”

The best part of all these was that, Anna didn’t seem angry about the whole Tamao-mom thing, though.

“You could’ve ran away.”

“I could have.”

“You could’ve just sold the onsen and went back to Izumo.”

“I could have.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I did not.”

“For Hana?”

“Well, don’t _you_ resent me, Anna-sama?”

Anna rolled her eyes. “Why would I do that to the person who looked after Hana when I was busy chasing the Munzer papers, thinking I was right in everything I did?”

Tamao smiled. “Similarly, Anna-sama, why would I do _that_ to the person… to the people who gave me such a wonderful life? I have a job. I have a roof to sleep under. And I have a beautiful, amazing son.”

Tamao took Anna’s hands in hers. “Anna-sama. It’s useless to rationalize the past at this point. All our what-if’s are useless once the present becomes the past. What we can do is work together for the future, right?”

Anna mirrored her smile, and that would be the last time they’d ever speak of those incidents.

* * *

Hana would be the school’s weirdest boy. He could see ghosts, and he had two moms, one of which had no real relationship with his dad beyond being his loyal employee and friend.

“And what will we tell the teachers if they ask?” Anna asked as her son ran off in search of his dad.

“That it’s none of their business how we raise our son around here.”

“ _Our_ son.” Anna smirked. “I like the sound of that.”

“Besides, Hana will just cry again if I tell him not to call me mom.”

Anna scowled. It was just one of the non-negotiable things with her son, but she’d come to terms with the fact that Hana’s first six years would never be hers. However, she was willing to share the next many, many years with Tamao, and Tamao was more than grateful to share the memories of those crucial first six years. And if they were proud of that, neither Hana nor Yoh himself did not need to be ashamed of it either.

Hana came back being carried in his father’s arms. Ryu held the camera up and took a picture of them.

“Smile!”

“ _Bweeeeh!_ ”

“Bocchan! Don’t make faces!”

“It’s all right, Ryu! Hana-chan will smile for his moms, right?”

Hana froze in his father’s arms, and the women laughed. Tamao and Anna then took their places next to Yoh, and Hana smiled again.

“Okay! Smile for the camera!”

“Okay!”

Their boy was growing. And this was just one of their first memories altogether.

* * *

Tamao’s life had revolved around the Asakuras for so long. People would probably say that she’d been their dog for way longer than she should be. People already said she was an outlier, inserting herself in a family where she had no place to belong to. People might even say she was stealing someone else’s kid.

Oh, why bother? People would say way too many things no matter what you did.

Tamao applied the rouge on her lips and gave a quick check on the rest of the colors on her face. This was the life she chose for herself, and she was proud to have made it this far. There still was a bit of emptiness in her heart, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t work to fill it up for the future.

Her own story would progress onward, no matter what.

“Let’s go!” she told herself as she stood, all ready for her enka performance tonight. Tonight’s song would be about loving a girl who was full of wishes and dreams and lost them to a war of ideals. Tonight’s song was not a sad song. It was a song of hope and strength. She might have lost her dreams, but she gained a family, one who would stand with her through every dream, hope, and battle, whether they lose or win it.

Things will work out in the end.

**Author's Note:**

> I got inspired by canon Tamao in TSS saying she gave up her dreams for the Asakuras. She deserves way, way better than this, especially that through all those years, she fought to keep everything of Yoh and Anna's assets, the onsen, their employees, and even their kid as she tried to keep herself alive and mentally healthy.
> 
> There's also a lot of Japanese culture referenced here. Here's a rundown: Japanese women tend to say "it can't be helped" in the face of sexism, the "sukeban" is a girl gangster in Japan, and "enka" is a style of music ballad that arose after the war. Even Tamao's experimentation with her style is kind of a Japanese girl culture reference: the kawaii style and the lolita fashion came up when Japanese girls and women became tired of always being policed, so they turned to fashion as a way to rebel. There's probably a lot more of culture referenced in the fic, so if you notice it and I didn't explain it, do bring it up in the comments!


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